The Only People Who Won't Benefit From Brexit Are The Political Class, The Far Right And The Far Left

Small-minded idiots hijacking a message. Picture from here.

Yesterday my wife came across an unusual sight.

Out shopping at a local Aldi in Leeds, she saw a saloon pulling a handmade ad trailer sporting a Vote Leave logo and a graphic spouting something along the lines of:

"...we want our country back...go home!"

Sadly she didn't have the presence of mind to take a picture of the car nor the trailer and was as confused as the other customers of Aldi, a major German supermarket chain that has just about made buying our weekly shop a significantly cheaper and less worrisome prospect where I live.

It is sad that some people have conflated the Brexit message with that of a racially motivated exercise in ethinic cleansing; worse, it is saddening that many would seek to tar one side of the debate with fault here or claim outrage in exactly the opposite manner than they had for similar events mere days before:

The coverage of Michael Adebowale - one of Lee Rigby's killers - did not focus on his history of mental illness. It focused on his ideology.

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) June 17, 2016

This following Owen's walking out of a Sky News Morning Papers Debate in which everyone appeared to agree with him on every point but were apparently breaking some unknown rule about a member of one group owning the right to outrage and language surrounding a sad event in that group (well, assuming you were the right kind of member of that community anyway.)

Sadder still, though, is the fact that anyone thinking immigration is just going to stop when we leave is laughably naive and/or mistaken; net EU immigration makes up less than half of all that incoming to the UK: 

Taken from this report

Migration is great for the UK; we get all these clever migrants schooled and paid for by other member countries who pay into the treasury without having taken out to get them there; unhelpfully, and perhaps with a mere whiff of the conspiracy given how pained the government has been to show the benefits of migration, the number of recipients of UK benefits of any kind are less than 3%.

What is apparent, as even InFact's admitted in one of their pieces, is that there is an inequality in who benefits from this boon, with NEETs with low educational and skills attainment benefitting the least; further, because of appalling monitoring of abuses of the minimum wage system, housing and countless other social problems brought about by cultural differences between arrivals and natives the effect is to disenfranchise just the sort who will be liking the Britain First facebook page or listening to the likes of the BNP twerps. They will take advantage of what are legitimate concerns on immigration because our political class has objectively failed to. 

In many ways the StrongerIn Crowd are right; the problems we see with migration are actually problems with the mediocrity of our own government; however, they perpetrate the myth that with greater reform at an EU level we can some how get past these problems: the short answer to this is that Europe isn't going to change in the way we would like and our remaining is preventing it from changing in the way it wants. Even David Cameron's renegotiation has no real legal binding and this was backed up with a threat of Brexit.

So what is the answer here? Why Leave if a major motivation behind leaving in the ability to control our borders is unlikely to happen? Smarter people than I have put it down better but the short answer is simple: options.

Brexit gives us options; we've tried to get our terms from the European member states and commission and we have failed - with a clear majority supporting the right of freedom of movement and continual access to the single market post-Brexit our parliament will likely opt for an EEA agreement and adoption of the whole acquis initially with a view to working through it and replacing where applicable (as per the plan); EEA states are only obliged to adopt parts of the acquis relating to the single market and even then retain a right of reservation; not obligating themselves to access that part of the market unless business in their country is happy to meet that particular regulatory regimen.

A Brexit doesn't oblige us to adopt "open borders" but "freedom of movement"; as the good Dr North pointed out freedom of movement can mean a variety of things. That said the one thing Brexit doesn't mean is giving in to the Far Right; I am happy to accept the asshole that did this was one such idiot because I don't identify with such a vapid waste of oxygen; and so people understand my mood I would gladly take in 30 refugees escaping genuine life threatening turmoil for every one of these malcontented pond scum that identifies with those folk in the first image, whom I could happily throw into the sea, preferably by trebuchet.

I look forward to 3 things from a Brexit:

1. The Mandelson's, Kinnock's and European Union wage-slaves and political claque suddenly becoming unemployed. I particularly look forward to everyone realising there is little point to UKIP post-Brexit and get back to holding our main credible parties to account.
2. Our own broken parliament coming out of the madness of the last 40 years and having to take responsibility for it's many faults and seeing a revitalisation of democracy as a consequence of it's profound stupour. Those in parliament who can will shine and those who cant will be drummed out.
3. The far right's victory being cut short when they realise they will get none of their desired outcomes from leaving; it will be almost as funny as the look of dismay when none of the doom and gloom of the remain campaign comes to pass.

Few things are sweeter than seeing wrong people proved wrong and put back in their embarrassment holes where they belong.